This book is a concise, clear and readable history of Roman Britain across four centuries. It is ideal for the general reader, including one who comes to the subject with no previous knowledge.

The book is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 (‘The beginnings of British history’) covers the Iron Age and Caesar’s invasions. Chapter 2 (‘The Roman conquest’) takes the reader from Claudius’ invasion in AD 43 through to the late third century. This is the longest chapter. It includes Boudicca’s revolt; the subsequent reconstruction of the province; the Hadrianic revival; the construction of the Antonine Wall followed by the retreat from Scotland; the reign of Severus and the division of Britain into separate provinces by his successors; the curious saga of the Gallic Empire. The chapter also covers social issues, such as urban development, life…

Written in Sophocles’ ninth decade (V.N. places Electra close to 410 BC), Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus are far from being the mellow reflections of old age. Instead, they are contentious and innovative, redefining the rules of Greek tragedy, reimagining the role of the tragic hero and even re-evaluating the place of drama within Athenian society.

This short, clear and elegantly-written study considers how ‘the Sophoclean tragic hero—lonely, defiant, and self-destructive—undergoes a crucial transformation in the last three plays’. Assuming little technical knowledge, V.N. devotes a chapter to each play, outlining how the tragedy unfolds, developing cogent arguments illustrated with quotations in his own English translations (where appropriate including the original Greek, transliterated and in parentheses), and always taking care to set the drama firmly within the context of late-5th C BC society and beliefs.

H.’s translation with commentary, which is the first to include both the cause of Ovid’s ‘offence’ and his ‘defence’ of his writings, is aimed at readers who have no classical knowledge. As a result, a detailed introduction is included, covering aspects such as metre, scansion and literature in the ancient world. It also includes an exploration of Ovid’s use of metaphor, e.g. the attention a lover must pay to their appearance as a metaphor for the attention an author must pay to their work of art; and of analogy, e.g. comparing the pursuit of love to chariot-racing or warfare. A list of examples of Ovid’s use of the art of love to resemble that of war, agriculture, sailing, hunting, sports, religion etc. is included.

The reasons behind Ovid’s exile are explored along with the possible role of Tiberius in…

This very engaging work sets out to save a whole treasure chest of priceless gems from an eternity in scholarly limbo, the chest being the lost second book of Aristotle’s Poetics. For some time now scholars have argued that a tenth century manuscript known as Tractatus Coislinianus summarizes this lost book, but up to now they have failed to establish the point conclusively. W. now hopes to succeed where philology on its own had not by making a philosophical case. His aim is to convince people that they will only fully appreciate the Poetics by accepting all of the Tractatus material as genuine Aristotle rather than, as one sceptic put it, no small amount of silly and extraneous material jumbled together with what is truly Aristotelian.

There is a deliberate intention to engage the general reader as much as…

How to bring together Chomsky and Latin? The concept of this book (a translation, incorporating minor changes, by Norma Schifano of Renato Oniga’s Il Latino: Breve introduzione linguistica [Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2004]) is an ambitious and laudable one: to bring modern linguistic theory to bear on Latin, and to do so in a way that is accessible to students brought up on traditional grammars and unfamiliar with twentieth- and twenty-first-century approaches to linguistic analysis, especially the generative tradition of which Chomsky has been the most notable proponent.

In three sections, this book considers the phonology (chapters 2 to 5), morphology (chapters 6 to 16, covering both inflection and derivation), and syntax of Latin (chapters 17 to 28), intentionally taking its order of treatment and scope from that of traditional grammars but describing them by means of modern…

This is a book which focuses almost entirely on Plato and Aristotle, and covers a wide range of material from the two philosophers, seeking to point the similarities and the differences, as well as including appraisals of a number of modern commentators. P. offers a balanced and non-partisan account. He adduces an impressive array of textual material, offering clear analyses. His discussion is well structured, so that by the end the reader has a clear picture of this complex and multilayered subject.

The book is divided into four sections, in each of which Plato’s thoughts are presented first, followed by those of Aristotle. The sections deal with (A) eudaimonia (happiness); (B) virtue; (C) phronêsis (practical reasoning); and (D) acrasia (weakness). There is a full bibliography, an index locorum, an index nominum and a general subject index.

In his introduction to The Penguin Book of Modern Verse Translation, George Steiner refers to Borges’ story of a man toiling his life away translating Don Quixote into the original Spanish. We all know that complete translation is an impossibility, and that a mode of expression as unique as a poem just adds to the difficulties. This is why the reader needs to know what the translator is trying to achieve with his or her approximation.

Slavitt has no doubt about his job, and reveals in his brief notes the additions, subtractions and changes he made ‘to get to what I believe Horace wrote’: so no historical and literary notes to align the English with the Latin. What readers get are the poems on the page, and no more, to render an Horatian experience. He hopes…

This volume offers a ‘concise and accessible introduction to ancient Greek philosophy…aimed at beginning students of classical studies and philosophy who wish to find their bearings in what can seem a complex maze of names and schools’. An introductory chapter , ‘Mapping the territory’, sets the time frame chronologically, from the sixth to the first centuries BCE, and outlines the social and political background against which philosophical thinking emerged, with brief biographies of significant thinkers. Thereafter W. chooses to abandon a chronological in favour of a thematic approach. Chapter 2, ‘Language, logic and literary form’ has sections on prose as opposed to poetry as a vehicle for philosophy; dialectic and dialogue (with some discussion of the so-called Socratic question); eristic; rhetoric; Platonic myth; and philosophy as expounded in Latin. The remaining chapters deal…

For those with a special interest in the tradition of Greek epigram or in the continuing and important developments in papyrology, this is a major new contribution to our knowledge. The material covered in the fragmentary papyrus—twenty or more pieces originally torn up to construct a mummy-mask—consists of just the first lines of 226 epigrams written in Greek during the Hellenistic period (probable date the late third century BC). Only one of the lines can be attributed with any confidence to a named poet—Asclepiades. All three editors acknowledge their debt to the multispectral imagining team of Brigham Young University, which has greatly aided the decipherment of the original fragments; colour scans of these will eventually be accessible on the website of Österreichische Nationalbibliotek (ÖNB), which owns the papyrus.

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Okay … I’ve been forcefully woken from my blog slumber by some images that initially seemed just a little suspicious to me, but might eventually set alarm bells off in my head. Folks who follow me on twitter (@rogueclassicist) might be aware that earlier today I was pondering thusly: first, I noted this sarcophagus at the San Antonio Museum of Art (and @MariolaRub posted the photo … the official page says it is “probably from Tyre”):

… and then I came across this piece, in very high relief and with similar panels, at J. Bagot:

via: J.BAGOT Arqueología – Ancient Art (go there for other views; this one is said to come from the necropolis of Tyre and was “decatalogued” by the Chrysler Museum … hmmm, I wonder why they decatalogued it)

As I saw more and more of this image, I openly speculated that we must be dealing with some sort of factory situation and then the conspiracy portion of my brain wondered whether that factory was ancient or modern. Then that portion of my brain suggested I focus on the ‘medusa’ image from the liveauctioneers piece (which is similar to all the others, but a bit more visible:

Does this image not bear a certain resemblance to an image from another controversy from a few years ago, namely, the Jordan LEAD codices? Specifically, this image:

So now I’m wondering … were the sarcophagi and the codex image the product of the same stamp? They have the same ‘right’ eye indentation and square jaw … the same ‘bird’ over the right eye, etc.. Lots of things here to make you go hmmmmmm, no?

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rogueclassicism: 1. n. an abnormal state or condition resulting from the forced migration from a lengthy Classical education into a profoundly unClassical world; 2. n. a blog about Ancient Greece and Rome compiled by one so afflicted (v. "rogueclassicist"); 3. n. a Classics blog.